Paris

My first audition for 2014 would be for the Paris National Opera's Young Artist Program. It's one of the biggest young artists' programs in France and I would be auditioning with 350 other hopefuls. It was also a great excuse to spend a few more days in Paris! The big items on the agenda (other than the main audition event) were to get a hot chocolate thick enough to rest your spoon on top of, and find a gluten-free patisserie. Both were expertly executed. 

Early morning!  Breakfast roll call is not typical but adventure is afoot!

Berlin provided a solid amount of snow for our departure

Plenty of seats available at 6 in the morning...

Action shot: almost to Schönefeld airport

The alley behind our hotel: looks more like Berlin than Paris.  Note: toilet in a drawer.

Making our hotel room a home.

Parisian cat

Fridge bag!  When your hotel does not include a fridge but does include window access, deploy fridge bag for your perishable items (probably only works in winter).

Denise had an audition and I was not allowed in.  I made do.

Just a few of the auditioners waiting for their turn (they were running about 40 minutes late).

On the other side! For the audition I was called back into a small theater and was given 10 minutes for a final warm up (which is always very helpful). There were only 2 people on the panel and I sang well! No major mishaps to report. Kenny came to pick me up and we were greeted by a very wet journey back to the hotel.

Huge fresh market right by our hotel. We decided to poke around while killing time before the audition results were posted at 10am.

Everything looked amazing.  Those look almost like green chile?

A personal agenda item.

Not for the squeamish: portrait of a bored butcher with his lambs.

Alas! I didn't make it to the next round of auditions. We decided to use our newly freed up time to explore Paris and get some consolation prize hot chocolates at Angelina's. Here is a pretty building.

Kitty!  At République.

Strategic panhandling.

Another one of my favorites from the Kenny collection. Expertly timed.

Hey ma! Look what we found!

Denise chatted up the lady inside and we got a 50 cent discount on a very delicious empanada.

Goooooooal!  Finally.  My phone went dead and I figured we could navigate by feel, having seen the map before.  Not a good idea in Paris when it's cloudy...lots of times you have to cross the street to keep on the same bearing.

Almost too beautiful to behold.

A rare delegation of roll call.  Probably the riskiest spot too...right in front of a major tourist trap.  He was all dressed in fancy blue pants, had a new iPhone, and expensive camera so I figured he wasn't really interested in my outdated kit.

Sneaky picture of that famous tower.

Hello Hallie!  We met up in a nice looking square (Place des Vosges!).

Drinks with Hallie: amount of fun directly correlates with the degree of blurriness in the picture.

Next day, objective: make workers at a gluten-free patisserie uncomfortable.  Check!

Paradise! Except the treats weren't as good as they looked. It seems like this bakery was overly fond of using chickpea flour in their baked goods and had to make things sickly sweet to cover up the strange flavor. I guess you can't win them all.

Hark!  What is all this action in front of a church?  There had actually been a fire, we came back by later once things (ahem) cooled down.

Way better up close than in pictures.

I believe this is the Ice Skating Federation's French headquarters.

A protest blocks our route!  Shall we attempt to ford the crossing?

Looking good, almost there.

Made it safe!

The aftermath of the church fire

And a motorcycle crash in the same day??  The man in the blue shoes was the rider, just a messed up hand.

More gluten-free heaven: Zach and Vincent made us homemade buckwheat crepes. These did not disappoint.

Wait for a plane.  1.5 hour delay...too cold for planes in Berlin.  Glad we're going back there!

Back in Berlin.  The sun was out but it was 14°F!!  Anyway, all accounted for on the train back to the apartment...just a couple of days before the next big adventure!